Home
Depot Drops Lumber Treated with Arsenic
Chain has 78 stores in Canada
Joanne Laucius, with files from Richard Starnes The Ottawa Citizen

February 14, 2002

Home Depot stores -- including those in Canada -- will stop selling lumber
treated with an arsenic-based preservative in the wake of the U.S. Environment
Protection Agency announcement.

The green-tinted wood
treated with chromated copper arsenate (CCA) will be phased out of the
residential market over the next two years. Lumber treated with the preservative,
a known carcinogen, is often used on decks, picnic tables and play sets.

CCA-treated products
can no longer be sold in the U.S. after January 2004.

Home Depot's U.S.
headquarters in Atlanta yesterday announced that it would halt sales of
the lumber long before that deadline.

The Home Depot chain,
which has about 1,200 stores around the world, including 78 in Canada,
is the world's largest home-improvement retailer.

Canadian Home Depot
stores will follow suit. However, Canadian Home Depot spokesman David
Day said it will likely to take some time before all of the arsenic-treated
lumber is off the shelves.

"We have already
bought for a year," he said. "There will be product on the shelves
for about a year."

Lumber companies in
the U.S., say that the move to stop using CCA was voluntary, based on
consumer interest in a new generation of preservatives.

The business of manufacturing
and applying the chemicals and selling the treated lumber is worth $6.4
billion Cdn in the U.S. and $750-million Cdn in Canada.

"Basically, we
did it for market reasons," said John Taylor, vice-president of Osmose
Inc, one of three chemical manufacturers that agreed to discontinue CCA
production. "We were responding to both current and anticipated consumer
demand."

Meanwhile, Health
Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency says it has been talking to
Canadian CCA manufacturers about a voluntary transition.

There are alternate
products currently registered for use in Canada, including alkaline copper
quaternary, know as ACQ, a wood preservative formulation developed about
seven years ago that contains copper and quaternary ammonium compound.
It is more expensive than CCA.

"That means not
every data requirement has been met," he said. "However, we
have enough comfort with it to allow it on the market.

"It will be fully
registered once the reviews are completed."

Mr. Richard also confirmed
that another alternative, copper citrate, is at the final stages of registration.

The Canadian agency
has been re-evaluating CCA for about a decade, and may have results by
this April. Health Canada scientists have been warning their department
about the dangers for about a dozen years. While it is known that the
wood treatment is carcinogenic, the level of risk is unclear. The EPA
said it doesn't believe there is any reason to remove and replace structures
treated with CCA, and the U.S. Treated Wood Council has said it stands
by the safety of the product.

Last fall, both Canada
and the U.S. made deals with the industry to carry warning labels on every
piece of pressure-treated wood.

Some Canadian cities,
such as Fredricton and London, Ontario have already stopped using CCA
products in parks and playgrounds.

Some legislators in
the U.S. are moving to ban CCA-treated wood for residential use before
the EPA deadline.

But some in the industry
have warned that while manufacturers are already converting to alternative
products, it may take time to shift production. The plants that treat
the wood will have to convert piping and other equipment to apply CAQ.